what i'm watching: don't miss edward norton in "leaves of grass"

I'm still in hell week here, two papers due next week, and no break in sight until two days after that.

Most nights, movies are giving me essential R&R, and last night we saw something I have to pass on to you: "Leaves of Grass," written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, and starring the great Edward Norton in a tour de force, playing two roles of identical twin brothers.

The movie weaves thoughts on philosophy, spirituality, family bonds, the search for self, and nothing less than the meaning of life into a funny - and deadly serious - story full of surprises. Like so many movies I love, "Leaves of Grass" is about redemption, and how it comes in ways we cannot plan.

Edward Norton, as always, is brilliant. He is truly one of the greatest actors of his generation. (If you have not seen him in Spike Lee's 2002 "25th Hour," run-don't-walk to rent it.) We haven't seen the other films Nelson has directed, but now I'm going to look them up: "Eye of God," "O" and "The Grey Zone". Nelson is also in "Leaves of Grass," and Susan Sarandon, looking resplendently natural as a woman of years and experience, plays the mother of the twins.

* * * *

I also really enjoyed "The Other Guys": Will Ferrell at his ridiculous best, a send-up of cop-action movies, very funny, a terrific New York City backdrop, and a decidedly anti-capitalist twist. Plus you get to see Derek Jeter get what you may think he deserves.

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"looking for eric" and "h2oil": a feel-good comedy and its opposite

Movie Season (the opposite of Baseball Season) is in full swing. We've been seeing a lot of good movies, as well as plowing through our The Larry Sanders Show box, but for now I want to mention only two titles.

For a feel-good, intelligent comedy, I highly recommend Ken Loach's "Looking for Eric". And if your heart knows the joy and pain of a deep love of a sport or a team, you will appreciate this even more. No spoilers here. Just see it. (Although it's an English film, you might want to watch it with English subtitles. It helped us enjoy the movie considerably.)

And for exactly the opposite... "H2Oil" is a documentary about the abomination that is the Canadian tar sands. Writer-director Shannon Walsh brings you to a First Nations community who are slowly being wiped out by the tar sands, and their efforts to fight the governments of Alberta and Canada, and oil industry giants.

We meet the community's doctor, who spoke out about what he saw and was charged with professional misconduct. He is actually a hero with the full support of the community.

We see the connection between the oil industry and the government of Alberta - and now, of course, the government of Canada.

We see the inextricable connection between this dirtiest, most destructive resource-extraction practice on the planet and the ongoing and future crisis of fresh water.

It's an excellent film - short, clear, compelling, heartbreaking. Especially if you are unfamiliar with the tar sands, please see it.

I have only one issue with this movie. One of the people interviewed is Andrew Nikiforuk, who wrote the book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. He is clearly an expert on the subject; I respect his part in the film and I look forward to reading his book. The bit I'm highlighting may have been a function of editing - what the filmmakers wanted to say - or may be a difference in our worldviews.

Towards the end of the movie, Nikiforuk ties the horrors of the tar sands to the developed world's appetite for oil. In this view, our unsustainable consumerist culture drives tar-sands production.

I do not dispute that consumer culture and the lust for material things is unsustainable. I acknowledge that, as individuals, we have a role to play in reducing our society's dependency on oil. But our individual lifestyles are not what drives environmental nightmares like the Alberta tar sands. Similarly, our individual lifestyles did not cause the BP gulf disaster.

What drives it is profit.

What drives it is capitalism.

Under a capitalist system, the earth's resources - which rightly belong to all of us and should be shared according to our needs - are controlled for profit by a few, at the expense of the many.

A small segment of society reaps vast riches from the tar sands, while the most vulnerable - in this case the First Nations people who live downstream, and the land and animals they depend on - die horrible deaths. The rest of us will suffer later, as the glacial ice fields are quickly depleted so the shareholders of Suncor and BP and Exxon Mobile can buy a new Porsche.

You and I can shop less, use public transit when it's available, reuse and recycle. And we should. But no matter how green our lifestyle, none of it will make a significant difference as long as the resources of our earth are controlled by private companies for speculation and profit.

Pointing fingers at people forced to drive to work because their town built sprawling roads instead of investing in public transit is another form of victim-blaming. What's driving the tar sands - and what's killing the planet - is capitalism.

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what i'm reading, winter break edition

Enough of school today! I must blog!

Here are the books I read over my break from school, thanks to the amazing Mississauga Public Library System.

I actually read Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels, in New Jersey over Thanksgiving. It's well known to Canadians, and was made into a very good movie, but doesn't seem to be as widely known in the US.

As I've mentioned in other contexts, I don't generally read anything Holocaust-related, as I was forcibly overdosed on Holocaust education as a child. But having seen the excellent movie adaptation of this novel, I wanted to read it, and I'm very glad I did. It's a novel about memory, generational bonds, generational conflicts and family secrets. It's also a view into what it might be like to live in an occupied town or village. What is it like for people who are not rounded up, but who are forced to live under the thumb of their oppressors, in their own homes, in their own town, every day? The deprivations, the daily humiliations, the constant fear. Michaels really brought this home for me. Fugitive Pieces was her first novel, quite an amazing debut. Even if you've seen the movie, the book is different enough that I highly recommend it.

A type of book that I love but seldom indulge in - my literary "junk food" - are what I call intelligent thrillers, spy or murder or legal thrillers with something extra, something deeper. Generally that means the author has a keen eye for human motivation, and the characters have depth beyond the stock items of genre fiction. If this appeals to you, one of the best of its kind is Donald Westlake's The Axe.

Over winter break I read two novels of this variety: The Legal Limit by Martin Clark and The Finder by Colin Harrison. Clark's was good - I would have made it about a third shorter - but Harrison's was brilliant. You may know Harrison as the former editor of Harper's magazine; he is married to the writer Kathryn Harrison, best known for the controversial memoir The Kiss. But Colin Harrison writes sharp, insightful New York City thrillers. His plots are intricate and unpredictable, his characters are complex, his dialogue rings true, and his New York City is a the real deal. The Finder was the best of his I've read so far.

I read Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead and wrote about it here. I loved this book and I love Whitehead's writing. I'm quite in awe of his ability to write something so simple, yet so complex.

And I read The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, which I mentioned (along with Fugitive Pieces) in my recent post about resistance. This is an excellent young-adult novel about a teenage girl's rebellion against the polygamous religion-turned-cult her parents belong to and her impending forced marriage. Reading and the public library figure into her liberation. The Chosen One speaks to the need for young people to have in their lives caring adults who are not their parents - what a vital resource that is - and is a reminder to us all to be that resource whenever we have the opportunity.

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what i'm reading: apex hides the hurt

I'll probably write a combined "what i'm reading" post for everything I read on my winter break. But right now I'm reading a novel I love so much, that I just couldn't wait to tell you about it: Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead.

I don't want to give too much plot away, because I love the way the novel unfolds, but here's enough to go on. A "nomenclature consultant" is hired to help a town re-name itself. This is a man who dreams up the names that brand our world - the popular pharmaceuticals, the cell phones, the toothpaste, household cleaners and video game systems. Now he's going to judge which name best suits an old town with a new look - new money and new computer-related jobs.

But the town already has a name. Gentrification and job growth are important, but what about tradition? Which leads to the question... whose tradition? Turns out, the town's current and historic name was itself a re-naming, not unlike "America" or the "West Indies". History is written by the conquerors - and the definition of "traditional" depends on where we start.

History, race, class, advertising, language, and consumer culture converge. Yet somehow this all happens in a slim, wryly funny, wonderfully readable, little miracle of a book. I am fascinated by - and so envious of - how certain writers can do so much in so little, layers of meaning packed into so few words.

Apex Hides the Hurt skewers marketing, advertising, and contemporary consumer culture. It's a commentary on the pervasiveness of marketing in our lives, and how marketing reduces everything to its demographic parts. It's about language, and how language is exploited to sell - products, ideas, people, history, anything.

The novel also plays with the contemporary penchant (or obsession) for naming every phenomena of the world around us, the kind that Urban Dictionary collects, but perhaps with a biblical reference, as a man continues to name the animals.

What do you call that terrible length of time between when you see that your food is ready and when your waitress drags her ass over to your table with it? He saw Regina emerge from the back of the restaurant. His eyes zipped to the plate sitting on the kitchen ledge. Tantalasia. Rather broad applications, Tantalasia, apart form the food thing. An emotional state, that muted area between desire and consummation. A literal territory, some patch of unnamed broken gravel between places on a map.

Apex Hides the Hurt even contains a wry send-up of libraries and librarians. A town librarian has written the official history of the town.

Winning over the town librarian for sympathetic press wasn't too much of a task, he figured. A set of leatherbound Shakespeare would do it.

Later, the narrator tries to visit the town library, only to find it has been displaced by a big-box clothing chain, a fictional version of Old Navy.

On the rare occasions that he entered libraries, he always felt assured of his virtue. If they figured out how to distill essence of library into a convenient delivery system - a piece of gum or a gelcap, for example - he would consume it eagerly, relieved to be finished with more taxing methods of virtue gratification. Helping little old ladies across the street. Giving tourists directions. Libraries. Alas there would be no warm feelings of satisfaction today. The place was a husk. The books were gone. Where he would usually be intimidated by an army of daunting spines, there were only dust-ball rinds and Dewey decimal grave markers.

Whitehead writes the hipster librarian with a perfect eye for detail. As she chats with the nomenclature consultant, he thinks, "Slimpies: Ready-to-Wear Shrugs for When You Just Don't Have It in You."

* * * *

Before the digital era and the explosion of activist creativity, before YouTube and viral marketing - and before the shelf life of taglines had been reduced to nanoseconds - there were some standard activist slogans you'd always see. The same dozen sayings would emblazon the t-shirts, bumper stickers and postcards sold at demos and folk music festivals. "I long for the day schools have a surplus and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale" and "Why doesn't Crayola's flesh-coloured crayon come in 52 shades?". In those days, there was something called a "flesh-coloured" crayon, a pinkish-beige hue.

Now we live in an era where flesh-coloured crayons come in many shades. Our TV screens are populated by people of all colours. But is that multiculturalism promoting equality, empathy and understanding among all people? Or is the appearance of diversity merely a tool used to induce more people to buy more products? This is a central question of Apex Hides the Hurt. It's about, among other things, what I wrote about here: "you can't find inner peace in a bottle (of iced tea)".

With this brilliant little book, Colson Whitehead becomes one of My Favourite Writers.

* * * *

I've also read Whitehead's wonderful, unusual debut novel The Intuitionist, in which ideas about race and how we perceive the world converge and double-back on themselves in a world of skyscrapers and elevator inspectors. Whitehead is also the author of some of the greatest words ever written about New York City, a collection called The Colossus of New York, the cultural grandchild of E. B. White's classic Here Is New York.

I blogged about Colson Whitehead after a terrific essay of his ran in the New York Times: "I write in Brooklyn. Get over it." And I included him in a trio of Great Writers on the Great City: please go here and especially here. (New York City fans: click on that last link.)

I have not read his novels John Henry Days (2001, shortlisted for Pulitzer Prize) or Sag Harbor (2009), but I will.

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highway fun, highway blues in pennsylvania

We always spend the last night of our US Thanksgiving trip at the home of my brother and sister-in-law in central New Jersey (near the city of New Brunswick, for those who know the state). We stay up late talking and drinking wine with some combination of friends - who happen to be siblings, nieces, nephews, and their respective partners - then wake up early to hit the road. The drive takes us through a part of New Jersey to Pennsylvania, through the Delaware Water Gap, up through the Poconos to New York State, then straight up through New York, emerging at the New York State Thruway at Syracuse.

We usually stop for a late breakfast near Scranton. (You may know the name from "The Office". It is indeed a real town in Pennsylvania.) But on this trip, we got horribly lost after leaving my brother's home - trying to correct a simple wrong turn just got worse and worse, and we wasted nearly two hours of drive-time. Because of this, we didn't want to take an hour for breakfast at a crowded Denny's, but we don't eat fast food. We especially gave up eating fast food on car trips many years ago. Driving around trying to find a supermarket would be more time-consuming than Denny's. On the way down, we stop at Whole Foods in Oakville for their amazing salad bar, but this is not an affluent area where we're likely to find one of those. What to do?

Through this dilemma, we discovered Sheetz, my new favourite pit-stop. Sheetz is a chain of gas stations and convenience stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and northeastern Ohio. What makes it special is fresh, fast food made to order. You order by touch-screen from a menu that includes the usual less-than-healthy but yummy items like burgers, breakfast sandwiches, shakes and plenty of fried things, but also salads and wraps with a good variety of ingredients. Any fast-er food franchise where you control exactly what you order - such as Subway or Blimpie - is already a much healthier option.

I see how the touch-screen order system is designed to encourage you to order more food, as you see all kinds of options that you might not otherwise think of, from double meat or dressing to fried things on the side. But the choices are extensive, there are many healthy options, and it's very inexpensive. I was way impressed. Here's Sheetz in their own words, and here's a map of where you find them.

* * * *

Despite Sheetz, Allan and I will be in no hurry to drive through Pennsylvania again. Driving through the Poconos area on a winding two-lane highway, we were cruising along in the right lane, doing no more than five miles an hour over the speed limit. After discovering what two speeding tickets will do to your car insurance, we are determined to never get another speeding ticket again. It takes us a bit longer to get places, but we don't care: we don't speed. Thus imagine our surprise when a state trooper with lights flashing pulled up behind us.

The officer informed us that there is a law in Pennsylvania that requires motorists passing emergency vehicles to move to the left lane if possible. This trooper was parked in a turn-off with his lights flashing - although no emergency was taking place - waiting for cars to not pull over, so he could ticket them. And, we suspect, waiting specifically for cars with out of state plates.

We were doing 70 mph (the limit was 65) in the right lane, and when we saw him, slowed a bit. To our left, cars were zipping by at top speeds, on a road filled with curves. It was far safer to simply drive slowly without changing lanes - especially because we could see there was no actual emergency, merely a police car with lights flashing, no other vehicle present - than it would be to move into the faster lane. Of course we didn't argue with the state trooper, as that can only result in a greater fine.

When he went back to his car to check license and registration, I assumed we would be issued a warning. I was wrong. He ticketed us. He said the fine can range from $25 to $250, and he generously gave us the minimum. As we drove away, I read the citation. Twenty-five dollars? Not quite. The citation includes:
- Fine: $25
- EMS: $10
- Mcare: $30.00
- Costs: $34.50
- JCP/ATJ: $10

I had to look up that last one: it's the cost of checking your information via computer from the cop car. Grand total for the ticket: $109.50.

In the fine print, it says that in order to contest the ticket without cost, you must appear in person. If you plead not-guilty by mail, you are required to send the full amount of the ticket plus a $7.00 processing fee, to be held as "collateral". If you are found not guilty, the money will be returned.

I don't know if being found non-guilty comes before or after pigs fly and hell freezes over, but obviously out-of-state drivers are unlikely to be aware of this lane-changing law, and are probably unable to contest a ticket in person. So the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has state troopers faking an emergency, likely waiting for out-of-state plates to pass, in order to fund the state's EMS, Medicare and mobile toys. Do I even have to tell you we're not paying this?

As an additional irritant, the trooper asked us where we were coming from, why we were traveling, and where we were going. Why is a state trooper asking us those questions? He's not working for federal border control or customs. If we have a valid license and registration, and are using the highway in a lawful manner, what the hell business is it of Pennsylvania's where we are going and why? Yet if we had politely answered, "We are not required to tell you that," things would have gotten much worse. That is an abuse of power.

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celebrate 2011 with the swans of stratford

For those uber-organized people who (like me) are already thinking ahead to 2011, or who (unlike me) have a list of holiday gifts to buy, I have a recommendation. The good folks at Across the Bridge B&B of Stratford, Ontario, have created a beautiful calendar showcasing their town's famous swans.

Eric and Kelly are originally from the US, now Ontarians running one of the many family businesses that live around the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. I'm totally biased towards this calendar: I love Shakespeare, Stratford, Across the Bridge, and the swans, and Eric and Kelly are our friends. But even without that list, it's a lovely gift idea that helps support a local, family-run business in a beautiful part of Canada.

You can see the photos and order a calendar here on their website.

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howard zinn, naomi klein and why we must let war resisters stay in canada

About 500 people packed the Bloor Cinema in Toronto last night, to hear Naomi Klein speak briefly, and to watch "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train," a documentary by Denis Mueller and Deb Ellis. We also saw a new five-minute film about the War Resisters Support Campaign and Bill B-440, an amazing piece that I look forward to posting as soon we're able to release it.

We were thrilled with the turnout, and even more with the event itself. There's no doubt that Naomi Klein's presence helped fill the house. Her warm and eloquent introduction tied everything together so beautifully.

The idea of this evening, she said - using this movie on behalf of Iraq War resisters in Canada - was born at a memorial service for Howard Zinn, one of her greatest teachers, and towards the end of his life, her friend.

Naomi talked about her parents, who came to Canada as Vietnam War resisters, who achieved official Canadian status in 20 minutes at the border. She contrasted this with the threat of deportation that the current war resisters live under, and the deportations that have already occurred. We need to see this difference, she reminded us, in the context of how Canada has changed, and "the rising mean tide, the smallness of spirit at the highest level" that characterizing the government's policies.

Evidence of this is in the hostile reception recently given to Tamil refugees, in the Harper government's plan to build more prisons, in the attack on dissent and freedom of expression at the G8/G20. And of course, in the increasing militarization of Canada. No wonder the government is hostile to these war resisters, she said. They're a visible reminder of how much Canada has changed.

Naomi recognized that people often say the Iraq War resisters are different than the Vietnam resisters, because the Vietnam War resisters were drafted. (Reminder: at least 10,000 volunteered then deserted.) But Naomi said that, for her, the fact that people did volunteer, and then desert, makes their resistance even more powerful - and makes an even stronger case for allowing them to stay. The Iraq War resisters once went willingly to war. Now, having seen the reality of war for themselves, they have experienced a profound life-altering change. They have gone up against the mighty US military to come to Canada.

Howard Zinn, of course, was a war resister of the highest order. He fought in World War II, the supposedly "good" war - then came to question the very concept, and came to decide that no war can ever be good. When we go to war to vanquish a tyrant, he said, we are killing innocent people who were victims of that tyranny.

* * * *

The film itself is a loving and moving portrayal of one of the greatest teachers and activists - one of the greatest Americans - that we have ever known. It follows Zinn through his earliest days, growing up in poverty, then as an airman and bombardier, and a labourer, putting himself through school while working.

At Spelman College, a traditionally African American university, Zinn didn't set out to lead his students into the civil rights movement. But he encouraged them to question, and to speak out, and to organize. "We embarked on a class project," he said. "To end racial segregation." He stood beside his students in struggle - and reserved, conservative Spelman College was never the same.

I won't walk you through Howard Zinn's remarkable life. I highly recommend the book You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Zinn's memoir, which I blogged about here, here and here, back in 2004. And this movie is a must-see. A new version of the movie will soon be released, since both Howard and Rosyln Zinn were alive when it was first released.

But I will point out two notes that gave me chills last night.

In the movie, Zinn talks about growing up in a home with no books. He says this is not an exaggeration: his family did not own one book. He would find books on the street, books other people had thrown away, and read them voraciously. Of course, eventually he discovered the public library.

The newspaper his parents read in their tenement flat in New York City's Lower East Side had an offer: you could send in 10 cents and receive a novel by Charles Dickens. His parents knew Howard loved to read, so they mailed off a dime, and a book by Charles Dickens arrived in the mail. The Zinns continued to do this until Howard had received - and read - all of Charles Dickens novels. Through Dickens, Zinn discovered that the poverty and struggle his family faced was not theirs alone, and it was not a natural and inevitable condition. It was global, and it was the work of men. Of capitalism.

Later, as a student, Zinn heard the song "Ludlow Massacre," by Woody Guthrie, about the brutal killing of 19 striking coal miners and their family members in Colorado in 1913. He looked in his history books for more information on the incident, and found none. There's a terrific scene in the movie where Zinn is addressing a labour gathering, talking about how the giants of the American labour movement were wholly absent from official US history. "I looked for the Lawrence Mill strike, it wasn't there. I looked for Bill Hayward, he wasn't there. . ." As he progressed through his formal education, this never changed. In graduate school, the texts repeated the same point of view as the books he saw in elementary school. This persistent, omnipresent perspective - the point of view of those in power - led him to write A People's History of the United States.

Perhaps some of you have already guessed what I'm getting at. I'm watching a movie about Howard Zinn, one of my greatest heroes of our lifetimes. And I learn that as a young boy, he was deeply affected by Charles Dickens, one of my great writing heroes - and later by Woody Guthrie, also on my short-list of heroes. It's not surprising to learn that Howard Zinn was influenced by people who used their art to crusade against poverty and injustice. But Zinn could have mentioned anyone. He said Dickens, and Woody Guthrie. My heart swelled.

I always wanted to meet Howard Zinn in person. That would have been a lot easier if we had lived in the Boston area. So many of our Red Sox friends heard him speak or saw him at demos! I never had that opportunity. I do have two emails from him that I treasure.

But last night, watching this movie, I felt close to him. I felt the spirit of Howard Zinn alive in the room, in all of us, in every one of us who carries the banner of peace.

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meet matt green. he's just walkin'.

Allan told me about a man who is living out my oldest dream. His name is Matt Green, and he's walking across the United States.

Here's why, the short answer.

Many people ask me the following questions when they hear about my walk: Am I raising money for a cause? Am I trying to set a record? Am I running from the law? My answer: I’m just doing it for the hell of it. Or, more precisely, I’m doing it for its own sake, for the value inherent in the act itself. Hence the name of this website: I’m just walkin’.

And doesn't it figure, the long answer begins with a quote from John Steinbeck.

This makes me so envious, it hurts. Really. Deep-down. For me it is, quite literally, the road not traveled.

But I'm happy there are people who do this kind of thing.

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julian assange and wikileaks profile in the new yorker

I've posted this link before, but I want to highlight and recommend it again. In the June issue of the New Yorker magazine, there was a long, fascinating profile of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is the organization that released the "Collateral Murder," video, which showed US soldiers in Iraq firing on and killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists.

It's quite an amazing story, also the kind of meaty profile that makes me salivate as a writer, an assignment I could only dream of. But I'm glad somebody is getting paid for this kind of work.

No Secrets - Julian Assange's mission for total transparency, by Raffi Khatchadourian

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in which shoppers drug mart makes it very easy to boycott them

It just got much easier to boycott Shoppers Drug Mart. I discovered their prices are consistently higher than prices at my supermarket for the exact same item. Goodbye SDM, hello Loblaws.

* * * *

In April, I blogged about Shoppers Drug Mart's shameful response to Ontario cutting prices on generic drugs by eliminating "professional allowances".

PAs are payments generic drug manufacturers make to pharmacies in return for selling their products. The drugstores say those fees allow them to hire more staff, stay open more hours, and offer "extra services" such as law-compliant packaging, patient counseling and free delivery.

This is ridiculously transparent. Law-compliant packaging is not an extra. It is not optional; it is part of the cost of doing business. Patient counseling is not optional. It's what pharmacists are supposed to do: give information about the drugs they are dispensing. And while free delivery may seem like an extra, for many people, it is a necessity.

PAs allow drugstores to do business more cheaply, subsidized by the drug companies. But consumers pay for this subsidy in the form of higher drug prices. Ontario is now eliminating that subsidy to make prescription drugs more affordable.

As the largest province in Canada, Ontario sets the bar for the rest of the country - so if this works, other provinces are likely to implement similar deals. Naturally, pharmacists and drugstores don't like this.

In response, Ontario's major drugstore chains threatened to cut services. Shoppers Drug Mart, by far Ontario's largest, made good on those threats even before Ontario's plan was implemented. They cut hours, laid off staff and, most outrageously, started charging $8.00 per prescription for delivery.

Charging for delivery disproportionately affects seniors and people with disabilities, especially in suburban and rural areas where public transit is very limited. Imagine being an elderly person with limited mobility living on an income where every dollar must be watched and pinched. That describes thousands, tens of thousands, who knows how many Ontarians. What if you need five prescriptions delivered? Can you afford an extra $40 in fees? Or will you have to spend potentially hours getting to and from the drugstore? I'm not kidding about hours. Buses run very infrequently in rural areas. And does the bus stop near the store? What if health and energy levels make travel impossible?

SDM has no problem using its customers as political pawns in their campaign against the provincial government: they targeted the London, Ontario riding of Deb Matthews, Ontario's Minister of Health, thus blatantly exposing their claims of financial hardship.

Financial hardship? SDM's profits over the last three years increased from $300 million to $585 million! But they are clearly more concerned with doling out profits to shareholders than services to customers.

* * * *

I wrote to SDM, telling them we would stop using them. But where would we go?

We already use a small, independent pharmacy for our prescription drugs, but we have been buying all our personal care and non-prescription drug drugstore products from SDM - and collecting "Optimum" points - since moving here. I very much wanted to take my business elsewhere, but how? SDM is omnipresent where we live. Wal-Mart is out of the question; I've been boycotting them for more than a decade. Someone suggested Costco, but there is only one Costco in Mississauga, and it's not convenient, and I would prefer not to roam the aisles of an airplane-hangar-sized warehouse to pick up shampoo. Small drugstores have poor selection and high prices.

Allan suggested we try Loblaws, where we already shop for groceries. As our principal food shopper, he assured me that Loblaws' drugstore section is very large, and thought we should give it a try.

So I embarked on a little project. I roamed around SDM with my notebook, jotting down prices for each product we use. Then I created a spreadsheet listing each item - the exact brand and all the particulars, or if we use the SDM generic brand, noting that - and each price. Allan took the chart to Loblaws next time he went shopping, and filled in their prices for the same items. I was amazed.

Everything is less expensive at Loblaws. Some items, like our preferred shampoo and deodorant, were $1.50 and $2.00 less. Some items, like generic allergy medicine, were half price - the difference between $25.49 for 36 tablets and $24.99 for 72! The only time SDM prices were better than Loblaws was on specially marked-down items. But we never time our shopping with store specials, we just buy things when we need them.

We've been collecting Optimum points from SDM for many years, and have cashed them in for $20, $30, $50 or more off purchases. I've written before about how I am a total sucker for these loyalty-reward schemes. I try not to sign up for them, because once I do, I allow them to control my purchases to a ridiculous degree. But SDM's Optimum plan seemed like such a good idea. They have what I need and I'm buying those items anyway; why not earn points towards future discounts?

Now I see what I probably should have realized all along: that I am paying extra for every item, and SDM is refunding the difference - if that - when I cash in my points. It's much better to buy the same item for less, while we're already at Loblaws for our grocery shopping. Plus we collect points at Loblaws, too.

* * * *

While I was chewing this over, I received a letter from SDM in reply to my letter saying I was taking my business elsewhere. Their response, of course, goes over the same company line about how Professional Allowances are needed to fund "extra services," and how dangerous the provincial cuts are, and so on. I expected all that, but when they appeal to me to join their cause, to visit their PR website and contact Deb Matthews to oppose the pricing changes, they only increased my resolve.

This week I will cash in my Optimum points one last time. I have $85 in free stuff coming to me and I am going to collect.

After that, adios Shoppers Drug Mart!

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